Categories: All - inequality - appearance - identity - peers

by Tammy Brewer 8 years ago

2217

Bullying: A Growing Problem

Bullying is a significant and growing issue that often stems from social inequality and biases based on appearance, race, socioeconomic status, or sexual identity. Victims of bullying are frequently those who keep to themselves, act differently, or do not conform to the norms of their environment.

Bullying: A Growing Problem

Bullying: A Growing Problem

Social Role(s)

Victim

A victims peers such as friend or family members will often tell the victim that there is nothing wrong with them, the bully was just being mean and will often encourage them to fight back or tell someone.

The victim of bullying of often the person or people that tend to keep to themselves and try to avoid confrontation. In other instances the victim will often be the person(s) that look or act different from many of the people they are around.
Bully
Peers

Many times the peers of a bully will be their friends that reinforce their poor behavior and regularly join in.

A bully will often be a person or group that believes they are better than the person that they are picking on or making fun of. Many times this occurs when the bully does not like that another person(s) is different from most people around them. Different due to race, political affiliations, sexual identity, etc.

Cultural Beliefs and Biases

Many people believe that a bully picks a victim based solely on the other persons size but in many cases the victim is chosen because of social or racial differences.
Many Americans tend to believe that bullying is only a school aged children's problem.
In America many people believe they can spot a bully based off of a person's  appearance.

Effect on Existing Social Conditions

Because bullying is now considered an epidemic, people are actually less likely to make attempts at befriending a person outside of their comfort zone in an attempt to avoid being bulied.
Subtopic
Due to the way that people talk about bullying now people are more likely to prepare themselves for an encounter with a bully by staying in groups, avoiding people they think may be a bully, or actually asserting dominance over a person they think could be a bully.
Bullying has become so much of an "epidemic" that many times when watching television whether it's the news or simply a show you like people will see commercials about anti-bullying.
Even though bullying has become less of a problem since 1992 it is hard to open a newspaper, watch television, or speak to a colleague without seeing or hearing a reference to the "Bullying Epidemic" (Pascoe).

Social Inequality

Many times a person is a victim of bullying because they are poor, a different race than the bully, from a different type of household than the bully, or due to their sexual identity.
Due to the idea that bullies look and act a certain way many people that "look" like the ideal bully are shunned simply because of their appearance.
because of their appearance.
like the ideal bully are shunned simply
a certain way many people that "look"
Due to the idea that bullies look and act

Main topic